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Wednesday, 31 July 2013

Ramadan Journal 2013: Day 20 - Grateful For...

I
had an interesting weekend just passed. I had a group of sisters staying
at my home. Their husband’s were mainly scholars and imams and were
staying at the local masjid and doing dawah work and teaching. This
involves visiting local shops and brothers living locally and telling them
about the masjid. Particularly where a brother who regularly attends the
masjid stops coming, they will visit him to see he is okay. They set up
halaqas (study circles) at the masjid and even in two local shops before
opening time for all of the staff to sit in (as hubby says, the best way to
ensure your meat is halal, is to give dawah to the butcher). They were
here for three days over the weekend and their wives stayed at our home.

Alhamdulillah, it was a wonderful experience. It was
nice sharing space with pious sisters, getting an iman boost and learning
beneficial things.

Many
of the ladies were the mothers of imams or hafiz (people who memorised the
Quran), so they were role models for me and I wanted to learn from them about
how they were with their children.

The
sisters held halaqa’s throughout the day, which were open for local sisters to
attend. These included basic tajweed (i.e. correcting the pronunciation
of verses we most regularly read), memorising hadith and dua, going through the
fard (prescribed) acts of ghusl (bathing), wudhu (ablution for prayer) and
salah (prayer) which many people get the basics of these wrong.

At iftar time, they would run through the sunnan (prophetic
traditions) of eating and at bedtime they would roll out their bedding on my
living room floor and go through the sunnan of sleeping.

There were certain things they really emphasised on that
stayed with me, these included:

The
importance of simplicity in our lives and in the homes

Making
the most of the opportunities to make dhikr (remembrance) of Allah (SWT) all
the time i.e. when we are going about our daily taks, doing our house work,
resting and travelling (they especially stressed the benefits of tahleel – la-ilaha-illalah, tasbeeh - subhanallah,
tahmeed - alhamdulillah, takbeer - allahuakbar, astighfar (repentance) and
durood)

Having
sincerity in everything we do and making sincere intentions. So even if
we are cooking, to make intention it is for the whole ummah (i.e. whoever might
come your way), making intention to do tahajjud before we sleep, so even if we
cant wake up, we get the reward of it.

Ikhlaq
- making sure we treat other people, including other Muslims really, really,
well. This included suppressing our rights to make sure we fulfil the
rights of others, because after all we will be held accountable for the extent
we upheld others rights not how many of our own rights we demanded. This
also included holding our tongue, refraining from backbiting, speaking well of
others and saying salam (the greeting of peace) to others. One lady said
something so nice - create a habit of saying salam amongst each other so that
you enter paradise with salam/peace.

It
was such a lovely three days. It’s strange, have a group of ladies in a room
and they start to talk too much and backbite. Make them live together for
a few days and the squabbling and fighting begins. But when you do it out
of love for Allah (SWT) you get a group of women who speak only kind words, or
to give good advice or to speak about their faith. They lived in one
space for three days without any squabbling and there wasn’t even a problem
with sharing the bathroom!

Before they left they made sure the house
was tidy, the kitchen and bathroom was clean and seeking forgiveness from the
household in case they had said or done anything to offend somebody

I am so grateful that Allah (SWT) sent these sisters my way,
especially so that they came to us in Ramadan.

And from among you there should be a
party who invite to good and enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong, and
these it is that shall be successful. ~ Quran (3:104)

About me

My passions include writing, books, bargain-hunting, dawah, crafts (cards, banners and jewellery), art, travel with my children, henna, being organised and the English countryside. You can contact me at umm_salihah@yahoo.co.uk

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